1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a powder coating booth in which powder coating of an article is performed.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a powder coating booth, there has hitherto been known the following in Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 299888/1996. Namely, an article to be coated which is transported into a powder coating booth is sprayed with a powder coating (or painting) material by means of coating guns of an automatic coating machine. The powder coating material which has not been coated on, or adhered to, the article to be coated is recovered by a dry type of recovering apparatus which recovers the powder coating material. In case the article to be coated is of a complicated shape such as a vehicle body of a motor car, there will be some portions which are left uncoated if the coating is made only by spraying the powder coating material by means of the automatic coating machine. Therefore, after having coated the article to be coated by spraying with the automatic coating machine, a worker sprays the required portions with the powder coating material by means of a coating gun, to thereby perform the required and sufficient powder coating.
However, if the coating work is performed by the worker, foreign matter such as dust, or the like, is brought into the powder coating booth by the worker. Therefore, there is a problem in that the foreign matter is likely to get mixed into the powder coating material that has been recovered by the recovering apparatus. Since it is extremely difficult to completely separate the foreign matter in the powder coating material, it is thus extremely difficult to reuse the powder coating material into which the foreign matter has been mixed. This fact brings about much waste in the powder coating material, with the result that the coating cost becomes high. Further, in a case where much foreign matter has been brought into the powder coating booth, the coating work must be stopped and the entire powder coating booth must be cleaned before the powder coating material that is available for reuse is made ready for recovering. This results in a poor productivity.
In view of the above-described problems, the present invention has an object of providing a powder coating booth in which the recovered powder coating material can be reused at a higher ratio of such reuse.